Cockney Sportsmen Re-Charging
This is the third plate of a series, Cockney Sportsmen, etched by Gillray and devoted to satirizing the hunting skills of its two cockney protagonists. The series consists of four plates and includes:
- Cockney Sportsmen Marking Game
- Cockney-Sportsmen Shooting Flying
- Cockney-Sportsmen Re-Charging
- Cockney-Sportsmen Finding a Hare
For more information about the series in general and its place in Gillray's work, see my commentary on the first plate, Marking Game.
© Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University
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Plate 3 of the series finds our cockney protagonists pausing in their hunt to re-charge. In the case of our fat friend, re-charging means feeding with gusto upon a small cooked fowl that he has brought along for the purpose washed down with a bottle of porter. His prize for the day seems to be the dead cat at his feet (no doubt mistaken for a hare). The more dandified of our sportsmen is attempting to re-charge his gun. His prize for the day seems to be a barnyard rooster, which he has hung proudly from his belt until such time as he meets the owner of the dead cock. But at the moment, he is obviously distracted by the bigger game nearby—a pond full of swans. So distracted, in fact, that he is holding his ramroad upside down. And he is likely oblivious to the fact that swans were a protected species, owned and marked by a privileged few. And there were considerable penalties for killing and eating them.
NEXT: Cockney-Sportsmen Finding a Hare
Sources and Reading
- Commentary from the British Museum on Cockney Sportsmen Re-Charging.
- "Cockney," Wikipedia
- "The Fascinating, Regal History Behind Britain's Swans ," Smithsonian Magazine
- Thomas Wright and R.H. Evans, Historical and Descriptive Account of the Caricatures of James Gillray #494
- Thomas Wright and Joseph Grego, The Works of James Gillray, the Caricaturist; With the History of His Life and Times, p. 272
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